Month: January 2005

The Gateway Blog – Part 1

Growing up, I always knew better than to mess around with blogs. My parents would tell me, “If you only remember one thing, remember this — stay off of blogs!” And this was easy through high school and through my mission. No one was offering me blogs. In fact, they hadn’t been invented yet (which I must say made compliance with that rule really quite easy). But unfortunately for me, I wasn’t able to stay blog-free forever. The culprit, of course, was Times and Seasons . . . “the gateway blog.”

Prodigal Artists

First, let me say thank you to my hosts. I feel like a celebrity. A couple of weeks ago, the Deseret News ran a column in its Religion & Ethics session about Mormons participating in the arts. The author, Jerry Johnston, put forward the theory that good Mormons will fail at convincingly portraying bad people.

Just a Quick Note

If you follow the links in William Morris’s post, you’ll note that the deadline is fast approaching for paper submissions for the AML conference. So if you’re sitting on that brilliant analysis of feminist themes in The Work and the Glory, now’s a good time to dust it off and send it in to AML.

Mormon Literature: Come on. You know you want to.

Look. I know you. I know you are sick of reading thick tomes of Mormon history and detailed 19th century mission journals and the latest on Book of Mormon apologetics. I know that you want something a little more literary, a little more narrative-y, a little more … fun. But still, you know, high-minded and serious and all that.

Laughter

Don’t laugh. Especially not on Sunday. The Doctrine and Covenants makes this pretty clear: And that thou mayest more fully keep thyself unspotted from the world, thou shalt go to the house of prayer and offer up thy sacraments upon my holy day . . . And inasmuch as ye do these things with thanksgiving, with cheerful hearts and countenances, not with much laughter, for this is sin, but with a glad heart and a cheerful countenance

Genealogy

My parents died a few years ago, both in their nineties, after a fulfilling life and with the memories of having survived two world wars and sixty years of marriage on the Old Continent.

Most Prominent Scriptures in Mormondom

Thanks to a cool feature on the scriptures.byu.edu website, it’s easy to rank the scriptures by the frequency they’ve been cited in General Conferences since 1942. I guessed number one, but was surprised by several of the top ten. Before checking the answers, make a few guesses: What are the most prominent scriptures in Mormondom?

Getting older

I mentioned earlier that I thought to post about what getting older has gotten me and then thought better of doing so. Now, with some editing, here is the post I resisted.

For JV on January 17

JV is the kind of person one notices right away in an LDS chapel, the kind of person one remembers. I’d seen her at various stake activities after I moved with my new husband into our micro-studio apartment in a transient-urban ward; when we moved into student housing in the neighboring transient-student ward the next year, hers was one of the few familiar faces that greeted us that first Sunday. It was impossible not to like her instantly: JV is outgoing, exuberant, affectionate, interested, and an intent listener. She also happens to be African-American.

Letter from Birmingham Jail

April 16, 1963 MY DEAR FELLOW CLERGYMEN: While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities “unwise and untimely.” Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statements in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

Blogging

I just finished a blog several pages long. It began a couple of weeks ago when a Belgian friend, Rudi, called to wish me a happy new year and to talk about making arrangements for his visit to BYU in April.

Are Powerful Women at a Disadvantage?

Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist Maureen Dowd’s op-ed piece, “Men Just Want Mommy” published in yesterday’s New York Times is getting a lot of attention. I’ve had a half a dozen friends email it to me with notes attached at the bottom that vary from outrage to despair.

Quick technical note

We’ve moved the site from the /wp directory to the root directory. (This move may help restore our burnished Google-rank).* The site is now fully running at the root directory. (Yeah, there was a brief period where it, uh, wasn’t. Sorry about that). There’s also a .htaccess rewrite in place to route people to the new digs, and I’m not anticipating any further hitches. If there are, please let us know.

Mormons and the professions

I’ve been reviewing the essays in the groundbreaking (and, unfortunately, still one-of-a-kind) anthology Arts and Inspiration: Mormon Perspectives in preparation for a series that I plan on running on A Motley Vision this spring. One of the impressive things about the work is the high level of professional achievement attained by the contributors. That combined with a passage in “Art: A Possibility for Love” by Johann Wondra got me thinking about Mormons and the professions.

Why “Remove This Cup”?

Over the past few days, I’ve been discussing the atonement with a Catholic friend. We’ve been comparing the different ideas our two faiths have (he’s fascinated, for instance, by the primacy that Mormons give to Gethsemane). One issue that has arisen, and that I don’t have a good answer for, is this — why does Jesus ask for the cup to be removed?

Gender Crisis in the Fox Household

I’m the Webelos and 11-year-old Scouts leader in our ward; we meet at the church every Wednesday, which is the day of the week pretty much everything youth-related happens. Given that many people drive quite a distance to make it to various meetings and activities, it’s not unusual for a few families to show up en masse and stay through the evening, with the younger kids tearing apart the nursery or playing games while the adults carry out their responsibilities. This is common enough that it’s become a kind of “play-date” for many children in our ward, our own girls included. Every other week Megan, our 8-year-old, has Primary Activities Day (PAD); this past Wednesday was an off-week, but she wanted to come with me and play during my Webelos/Scout meeting anyway. She played tag in the cultural hall for a while, but then joined up with my boys when I brought them out for exercises; they’re working on their Athlete activity badge. Megan did great: stretching, curl-ups, the long jump, etc. She’s quite active (ballet, gymnastics, etc.), and actually outperformed the boys in some of their requirements. She loved showing off, but also loved the physical competition. On the…

In the Cultural Hall

The danger in telling people you write a little bit is that they then assume you can. Last week a friend from my ward called and asked me to write the libretto for a musical show she has been called to coordinate for the stake; a few of the creative decisions had already been made, she told me, but she needed me to write lyrics and a narrative frame for the story. The show is meant to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of our stake, headquartered at the Butler Hill meetinghouse; the stake presidency had designated a “Sound of Music” theme, and the show had been titled, naturally, “Butler Hill Is Alive with the Sound of Music.”

Aesthetic Changes

We’re doing some slight tinkering. Any feedback is appreciated. (Also, if we break something, please let us know, along with any relevant details — “I can no longer load the page in Netscape” or whatever.) Thanks!

Some (Long) Thoughts on Mormon Political Theology

This past weekend I flew down to New Orleans to participate in a panel at the Southern Political Science Association on “The Theory and Practice of Mormon Politics.” The panel was originally proposed and organized by our own Nate Oman and frequent T&S commenter Jeremiah John, a graduate student at Notre Dame; unfortunately, Nate wasn’t able to join us, so in the end the panel consisted of papers from me, Jeremy, and Roger Barrus from Hampden-Sydney College, with comments from former T&S guest-blogger Damon Linker. Ralph Hancock, a BYU professor of political science, chaired the panel. What follows is some lengthy notes on the event, obviously somewhat skewed by my own perspective and preferences.